A short documentary about the exploitation of Africa by Western countries and about the necessity of resistance. This film was banned for a long time because of anti-colonialism in France.

The Hour of the Furnaces is considered to be the key film of Latin American revolutionary cinema during the Cold War. The monumental three-part series by Solana and Getino – of which the Filmstelle will show the first part – is a raw, chaotic and captivating masterpiece from the Argentine underground. The Hour of the Furnaces addresses workers, farmers and intellectuals with an unmistakable and documental tone and calls for an uprising against pro-American dictators and oligarchs. Through its essayistic style and compelling archive material, the film shatters the static bourgeois cinema and thus becomes an open weapon against the ruling system.

As a manifesto of independence and in the spirit of the anti-imperialist liberation movement, this “guerrilla film” was shot underground and completed on the run. Even the screening of the film was constantly interrupted with political discussions in spirit of the education of a revolutionary ethos. A visual declaration of war!